"Wittgenstein" is the nickname of a philosophy don at Cambridge (we never learn the character's real name) who is so-called by his students because of his intensity, his brooding melancholy and his habit of utterly gnomic aphorisms *sample: "One day, logic will whisper in our ears. Logic will say the kindest words. We will mistake it for roaring … We will confuse it with the howling wind …") The novel is told from the point of view of Peters, a Northern undergraduate who falls in love with Wittgenstein. But Wittgenstein is not an easy man to love – almost too brilliant to live, tortured by thought, and by the suicide of his mathematical genius brother, he's constantly on the verge of a crack-up. Lars Iyer also captures the ceaseless ironic banter and the heavy drink-and-drug intake of the undergraduates. The style is unfailingly funny and felicitous. And it's just so clever. Think Martin Amis meets Nietzsche. It's not much longer than a novella, but it has all the heft of a big fat novel.

Brandon Robshaw reviews Wittgenstein Jr in The Independent on Sunday.